Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Questions For The Competition is a weekly column that addresses our issues with the brackets of other bracketology "experts." This week's questions are reserved for ESPN's Joe Lunardi, SI.com's Andy Glockner, and CBSSports.com and CollegeRPI.com's Jerry Palm. Keep in mind that these questions are about each expert's most recent bracket, all of which were released before Monday's games.

Joe Lunardi (ESPN) - Feb. 15 BracketLast week, your Last Four Out was full of Big East teams. This week, it's full of SEC teams. When will you start making some tough decisions about the big conference bubble teams? There's no way that the SEC gets only three bids when all is said and done.

How in the world is St. Mary's still in the field? The Gaels have a better resume than Florida, Mississippi, and Cincinnati? How exactly?

How is Dayton still in after their loss at Saint Louis? More importantly, how are they a 10 seed still?

Old Dominion is safely in as an at-large right now? Really? If you like them that much, why not just put them in and leave Northeastern, who they are tied with in conference, out?

How did New Mexico win at UNLV and at Utah and fall from a 3 seed to a 4? If they lose a game this week, will they be back up to a 3?

Jerry Palm (CBS, CollegeRPI.com) - Feb. 15 Bracket If the season ended today, how would a 20-4 team that is 7-3 in the ACC not be in the tournament? There's absolutely no way you can have Virginia Tech out of a "season ending today" bracket right now.

How many losses does West Virginia need to have to fall off the 2 line?

How is Clemson a 12 seed (after a two-win week)? How is UNLV still a 6 (after a two-loss week)?

Having Dayton in is questionable enough, but giving them a 9 seed? How do they deserve that?

Isn't Cal a little low at a 12? Isn't URI a little high at an 8?

Andy Glockner (SI.com) - Feb. 15 BracketVirginia Tech is a 9 now? It seems like only yesterday you were questioning us on Twitter about why we had the Hokies in. Ah, memories....

How is Georgetown still a 2 seed after losing at Rutgers?

You went from five Big East teams in last week to eight in this week? Can you please make up your mind on how many Big East teams deserve bids?

7 comments:

Anonymous
said...

seems to be a common theme on how idiotic Lunardi, Glockner, and Palm are....it's getting to the point where it's just comical that any of them even have a job. I swear Lunardi does his bracket while he is at the Borgata playing blackjack. Who lists every last four out/in from the same conference?? Glockner is all about his own agenda which just happens to making excuses for any ACC team that deserves to be in. As for Palm, the RPI is a tool for the tournament not a be all end all.

Get a clue, put Va Tech and Maryland as a 10 seed if you want to and your gonna get a lot of 2 seeded teams getting really nervous in the second round of the dance

What do you have against Dayton? They have nice wins over Georgia Tech, Old Dominion, George Mason, Charlotte, and Xavier. They lost close games to strong opponents New Mexico, Villanova, and Kansas State. Dayton played a very good OOC schedule and won some of those games. It is amusing that Dayton beat fellow bubble team Georgia Tech, yet b101 has Tech in and Dayton out. What is wrong with this picture? Favor BCS teams much? Craig and Chris will be proven wrong on selection Sunday when Dayton's name is called. Trevor F.

Dayton's problem has been the same for weeks now: they have the sixth best resume in a league that we think will max out at five bids. Looking ahead (which we do, remember, when we put together our bracket), the Flyers still have road games at Temple and at Richmond, which we don't see them winning given their recent road struggles. Losing those two games would mean Dayton would finish at best 10-6 in the A-10, which wouldn't be enough unless they made a deep run in the A-10 tourney.

Dayton's best hope for a bid is to go 5-1 down the stretch and hope that the two lowest A-10 seeds in our bracket - Charlotte and URI - fade down the stretch. Then the Flyers could sneak in as the A-10's fifth team.

Trevor, Don't let their bashing of Dayton bother you. They said the same thing about Richmond a couple of weeks ago but now have the Spiders in. Richmond never should have been out of the bracket with their strong OOC resume. It was an oversight by the guys. Also remember, they said there was no way the Atlantic 10 would get more than 4 bids, but they have 5 Atlantic 10 teams in the bracket now. Bracketology 101 continues to flip flop when it comes to the Atlantic 10/Richmond. So don't let them ignore Dayton's strong resume.

If we didn't change our minds on things, then we may as well just post a pre-season Field of 65 and be done for the year. A lot has happened over the last few weeks to change our thinking about the A-10. Richmond picked up two huge conference road wins, the Pac-10 continued to be terrible, the Colonial went from a two-bid to a one-bid league, and no sixth team from the Big Ten or eighth team from the Big East established itself as a definite at-large team. All of those factors led us to include a fifth A-10 team after saying for a couple of weeks that we thought the league would max out at four. Dayton's been knocking on the door for a while now, but they still are the sixth best A-10 team resume-wise. We aren't saying they won't get in, we are simply saying that they will have to get in at the expense of another A-10 team. URI and Charlotte are the two weakest A-10 at-larges right now, and it wouldn't totally shock us if the Flyers made it over one of those two teams down the road.

In the end, our goal (as always) is to predict what the selection committee will do, and we've been pretty good at doing that over the past four years. There is a big difference in a non-power conference getting six bids as opposed to getting five bids. Whether that's right or not is besides the point. The relevant point for now is that the A-10 is looking at a max of five bids, and if Dayton can start winning some road games and finish 11-5 in conference, they will likely be one of those five teams.

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